My years in middle and high school were rough for a lot of reasons. The last thing I needed were adults telling me "these are the best days of your life!". That was the most demoralizing thing I could have imagined back then.

Once I was 18 and in control of my life, things got so much better. There have been different chapters, but they've all been good or at least memorable in their own way.

What I would (and have) told kids who are clearly having a rough time is that things can and will get better. When you're a kid, and bad situations that are entirely out of your control to change are happening, life can be miserable. Eventually you get some agency, and that goes a long way. Sometimes as an adult, things come and happen too, but telling a kid who is currently miserable to look forward to something better is a lot more helpful. Barring some outside tragedy, life as an adult is much less grinding than being a kid shaped cog.

I love this sentiment. In my mid 40s I went through a period of “it’s all downhill from here” but I took steps to change my life for the better and I’m living the dream now.

Time is going to win eventually but I’m going to fight it every step of the way and will make damn sure I enjoy the battle.

That quote from everything everywhere all at once really got me. Kindness is how I fight. In a world of hardship and bravado being jolly and soft is my act of rebellion.

As I've aged, I've become less emotional, period. It works both ways. I don't have the high of the extreme kids as often, but painful stuff is also less-impactfull.

There's just not much novelty to experiences anymore, so I just kinda live through them and move on.

A few years ago the woman I absolutely intended to marry and spend my life with fairly suddenly broke it off. If I had been 20 it would have debilitated me, but at 40 it wasn't the same.

Yeah, it sucked and derailed my future plans, but I also had a Planning and Zoning Commission meeting that night I had to prepare for, so I just kept moving forward and lived my life.

I ended up being upset that I wasn't really that upset. There was no weeping, hatred, name-calling, etc. It was just a shitty thing that happened.

I'm 40 and I think with the strongest faith people who say this kind of things are an absolute toxin.

honestly when I was younger it was mostly nicer because you looked forward to having a nice life. Seeing it not come to pass and realize its not going to get better is sorta a downer.

I've started going on afternoon walks where I just go around town snooping, smelling flowers, looking at cool bugs, and seeing how long I can walk along the curb. It's actually been really great.

I remembered how when I was a kid, a square meter of nature held infinite fascination. I could just squat there for hours (RIP being able to hold a squat for more than a minute lol), just like peering into this fractal of wonder.

So yeah, maybe not quite that level, but I've been recapturing a bit of that.

As much as i dont want to be the adult saying this to youth. And i won't be outwardly cynical enough to actually say it to anyone. It is really funny when i know that's how i felt in my youth, and i know how i feel in my mid-30s. It's creeping up on me. Tapping me on the shoulder. Wondering why i am still pretending its not there, and no matter how hard i fight and cling on, i am still falling into the realisation that i can't be a kid forever.

Joy isn't reserved for the young, but it's sure fucking easier to be joyful when your body hurts less because you're far less likely to have one or more chronic pain conditions in your youth.

Your heart won't harden? It might just with atherosclerosis and enough time.

So go enjoy the joy even more now while it's still easier.

Ha! Jokes on you, I've never been happy.

I feel like life gets better and better and I'm 40, so...

Outside of tragedies beyond your control, like illness and so on, it's also a matter of trying to have a fun and good life every day.

I'm 43 and I feel like I'm living in a movie after the credits rolled. It's joyful when I sleep I guess.

In the US, at age 18 you become a debtor.

Somewhere in your 20s or 30s you become a real estate speculator.

Eventually people start owing you money, and then the cycle repeats itself with the next generation.

This system is anti-joy, and I will never accept it into my heart. I will fight it with every ounce of my strength until the day that I die. This is my joy.

Good Luck kid. Try not to lose that spark.

I don't want to say it gets worse, so I tell them to enjoy being young and have experiences while they can, because it gets more difficult.

Like, if you do stupid things and break a bone, better do it while it will heal much faster. If you want to get good at gymnastics or anything that requires being physically fit, better do it while being young.

I'm starting my 40ies and can only see how my knees are starting to hurt and my body aches in ways I didn't know it could.

My grandmother is 95 and wants to die. She was active for her whole life but now that she is losing sight, hearing, and is mostly bound to her apartment, she's had enough. And I can understand.

You certainly can stay young and joyful in your head, but at some point your body is not going to help.

My adult niece and I had a convo years ago when she was still in high school. I told her that she was in the most challenging part of life and that in a few years, when she turned 18, it would start getting better with autonomy. I don't know if it helped her during a challenging time, but I hope it validated her struggles and gave her something to look forward to because being a teenager in school is the worst.

That's not how it works, unfortunately.

Often people say "life is what you make of it", but that's not quite true. You can try to steer your life by your actions, but in reality fortune plays a greater role than you can imagine.

I have been very fortunate in my life, most people I know have not been. From broken dreams, blossoming mental illness, to just plain old death - a lot of the people I care about have been robbed of joy in their lives.

It's not something they gave up through weakness of character, it was something taken from them. When you are young, you've maybe only had a couple of bad rolls, but when you're older odds are you'll be worse off (the probability of misfortune often being higher than that of fortune).

I don't necessarily say that to my kid as a warning. In fact, yesterday it was said to her as an encouragement. She has a significant sum of unspent allowance and she saw something she really wanted but decided she didn't want to spend her money on it. I told her that she is at a point in her life where she can spend money on whatever she wanted and not have to worry about bills or rent or what happens if she runs out and she should take advantage of that. So she bought the thing she wanted and she was happier for it.

Perhaps a trillion galaxies out there. Numbers of stars in a typical galaxy is about 100 billion. But at least we have more grains of sand on our planet.

Anyway, life most probably gets better after high school, and most probably keeps getting better until you're old enough to develop some disease. Or perhaps you die in war, or in a hospital bed, or homeless under a bridge.

I truly don't know where I'm going with this.

It’s a perspective thing to a degree but it’s also your ability to avoid the crushing weight of reality.

Like approaching 40 I can appreciate that I finally have some money for the things I like, that I have more freedom and wisdom, that I still have the ability to start things, etc

But at the same time there’s the crushing reality. To get that money I trade time and if there’s one thing I miss about being young it’s the amount of free time I had. I just got a bass and I love playing it but I can only do like 20-30 minutes a day and have to skip many days because of life. When I was 16 or even 22 I could often practice drums or piano for hours per day. I could work less of course but that’s not usually an option for most people without changing jobs and also can lead to financial insecurity

Then the even less fun parts of recognizing your body just doesn’t work as effectively. The permanent neck injury I got from work when I was 25 that didn’t bother me as much then is significantly worse now despite physical therapy for years, cortisone, regular strength training, etc. what used to be a stiff neck is now genuine pain that impacts all the way to my shoulders. Knee injury from youth is similar. Then the just unfair bits like my vision deteriorating significantly. It’s not injury related, just lost the genetic lottery.

The cognitive decline as well. I’m still plenty sharp but I can recognize my math processing becoming slightly slower, tripping up my words more often, needing to read things more thoroughly than I did when I was 24 and in grad school, takes me longer to learn things like the bass, my reaction times in videogames are worse, etc. It’s nothing major of course, no family history of dementia thankfully, but it’s part of how the human body works. My job involves assessing people’s neurological state and somewhere in your mid to late 30s starts the slow decline. For some people this will just get to “pretty forgetful, senior moments” and then they die. For others not so lucky they get dementia and have a truly tragic end of days.

But at the same time I do think a sense of optimism is important. I just think it’s important to be rational and realistic about this. Radical acceptance helps here. I can’t get back youth or time lost or whatever, so no sense getting too distraught over it. This applies to youth as well, who may not deal with any of the above but often have their own problems that cloud the potential positives in their life. Anyone can lose their sense of joy and everyone has shit going on. Maybe for them it’s more existential dread, the crushing weight of finding direction, etc. The shift to optimism is that I remember despite the ugliness of reality there are still good times to be had, even if my neck hurts the whole time

"Joy as an Act of Resistance"

Fuck em all will find the silver lining

My childhood was trash. My life has only gotten better as time goes by

I had my moments of “wow, adulthood is shit” but I’m trying to change that.

I remember thinking like this once. Then life got a lot worse.

I am 43 and finally living my best life thanks to a cocktail of psych meds, therapy, and support from my spouse and kids.

Life frequently gets better after high school. You get to make your own decisions, be who you want, be with who you want, and live where you want.

I'm older than most here and I lead a mostly good life. I think the saying is mainly regarding death. In youth, you don't experience as much of it, but as you age, more and more people pass around you until it's you, alone.

I have no dreams that i can achieve in this life and my heart grew cold long ago, but life is still getting better for me anyway. I'm still somewhat optimistic about the world. We don't have to give up just because things suck. On the contrary: that's when we can do the most in the world.

“Would you go back to being a kid again?”

I think that implies retaining a certain level of awareness that you were an adult so that you could have an appreciation for the time travel.

The only reason I think I’d want to be a kid again is to see all the people that are gone today. I’m well past middle age, and there are fewer and fewer people left from my childhood, and the togetherness I experienced with family was something I didn’t really appreciate until it stopped happening - along with my failure to ask what their lives were like and learn history from their viewpoint. That’s what I remember most. Not the toys, the idle days at school or with friends. It’s Holidays. Bored out of my skull with people I didn’t appreciate, but yet being glad they were there. A lot of them aren’t anymore.

Otherwise being a kid kinda sucked. Your life revolves around what everyone else wants you to do and you can’t really say no, fuckit, I’m calling in sick today. All the stupid drama at schools. Your freedom (pre-internet) was held by your parent(s) willingness to get their car keys or if you had any money and a bicycle. I didn’t like school. I didn’t fit in. I would not go back.

Yeah, it’s better to be an adult in most ways. (I say that with the caveat that I understand some may have had easy childhoods or have very difficult adult lives. Meh, this turned into a bigger post than I expected. I guess I’ll leave it anyway).